Welcome

My name is Marama and I am an artist, bookmaker and educator.

I was born in New Zealand and worked as a journalist and publicist in the arts before moving to the South Coast of New South Wales over 30 years ago to live in a tree house in the forest. After a year, the tree house burned down in a forest fire and I moved into an old cottage in town.

I love playing with words, images and paper and I especially enjoy making books and running workshops on book arts and journalling for all ages. My intention is to live a simple and creative life. In this blog I plan to share some of the things I have learned as an artist, writer, gardener and teacher living close to the earth in a small rural community.

My work has been published and exhibited around Australia, in New Zealand, North America and Japan and is included in anthologies and collections (such as online at Regenerator 2 Altered Book Project which was initiated by Sarah Bodman at the University of West England).

Over 60 of my artist’s books were recently acquired by the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand. My books are also in collections at the Australian National Library, the National Gallery, the State Library of Queensland (with Feral Artists) and Wollongong University.

In March 2017 The National Library of Australia purchased my flower-fold book titled ‘Blossom turns to Fruit’ from the CodeX exhibition at CraftACT and the Manly Artists’ Book Award 2017 chose another book in that series ‘Fruit turns to Seed’ for their collection.

I have co-ordinated a number of writing and book arts projects including The Ulladulla Book Project, funded by an Australia Council Literature Board grant and continue to work as a freelance writer, editor and publisher. My Finding Content workshop, which I ran in Auckland in conjunction with the ABC International Book Arts Conference and also for the Papermakers of Victoria is very popular and I continue to run workshops in Australia and New Zealand.

I am the author of Wild Garden, Adventures of Pai Korri (illustrated by legendary Australian printmaker Joyce Allen) and designer and editor of many limited edition and artist’s books. I am a member of the NSW South Coast Writers’ Centre, The Milton Writers’ Studio, The Canberra Craft Book Binders, The Canadian Bookbinders and Artists Guild and the NZ Association of Book Crafts.